Who knew Team Bugs had such depths of athletic abilities?  That will come in handy as they enter the seedy world of performance-enhancing drugs.  Simon and Eugene discuss A Sporting Chance.

Episode Synopsis

Ed, it turns out, is some sort of black belt in a curiously mixed mode martial art.  He is at Dr. Defreitas’ school on an assignment.  His job, to beat up students, which, with some difficulty, he does.  In fact, his opponent, Jason, collapses and is taken out by convenient paramedics on a stretcher.  Another student, Kane, aggressively threatens Ed after the fight.

Roz and Beckett are watching via remote camera.

Soon, Dr. Defreitas explains.  Dr. Hunter is using the sports program at her school to test an experimental “natural” performance enhancing drug called Tri-Meserone.  Defreitas thinks something is fishy with his medical experiments and that’s why she’s called in experts in electronic surveillance and security.

When you’re a carpenter and all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  Team Bugs decides the best course of investigation is to bug Dr. Hunter’s office and illegally wiretap his phone.  This pays off quickly and they discover that Hunter is working with Colonel Easterhaus, a mercenary.

Meanwhile, Roz sneaks into Hunter’s lab and steals his computer files, but she’s discovered and chased, rather doggedly, by Kane, who won’t stop until he collapses and falls off the roof.

Easterhaus needs this drug urgently, which doesn’t seem to alarm Dr. Hunter enough, but he can’t hurry it up, because its got a serious side effect.  When some test subjects’ heart rates hit 180bps, a collapse is triggered.  

And in that moment, everyone in the audience knows two things:  One, the writer of this episode has recently seen the film Speed, and, two, that one of our heroes will be injected with the drug before this episode is over.

What we do not know is whether it will be Ed, who we just learned was a championship black belt or Roz, who we just learned was a championship distance runner.

Tapping the phone pays off and leads the Bugs to a strange, unfinished building with no doors.  So, when they get inside, they climb the elevator shaft up over 20 floors.  Later, they discover the stairs – which don’t lead to the first floor.

They split up and discover the missing athletes, sedated and in a makeshift hospital unit, and a computer simulation of London.  They also trigger a security system, bringing Easterhaus and his thug, Hex, chasing after them.

They escape, and they figure out that Easterhaus is planning to create not super athletes, but super soldiers for a coup attempt.

Easterhaus finds the Bugs’ bugs in Hunter’s office.  He takes, at gunpoint, Roz, DeFreitas and Hunter back to his secret lair, where he has Roz injected with the latest version of Tri-Meserone, and then secured to a treadmill where she must maintain running with her heart rate between 140 and 180.  At 180, she might die.  At 140, weights will crush Dr. DeFreitas.  Hey, I told you they’d seen Speed.  

Eventually she passes 180 and survives proving that either Hunter’s new formula works or that Roz is one of the people that don’t collapse at a heart rate of 180.  Either way Easterhaus declares the trail a success.

Meanwhile, Hex has used the Bugs’ bugs against them to lay a trap, and thinks he kills Ed and Beckett. 

They follow him back to the lair, where Roz has staged an unsuccessful escape attempt, getting DeFreitas killed, and Hunter injured, but Hunter has escaped into the building with the Tri-Meserone.  

Roz doesn’t get away and is this time strapped to a computer-controlled weight-lifting machine that is too heavy for her to lift.  There’s also a very simplistic bomb, attached to a ridiculously-complicated timer mechanism.

Amongst Easterhaus’ formidable arsenal is a force barrier that keeps Ed and Beckett delayed until Roz can find he own way out of the weight-lifting machine.  

Once past the barrier, Beckett finds Hunter and gets him away from Easterhaus, while Ed must battle super-solider Hex to the death.

Knowing the building is about to explode, Easterhaus gets the drop on Beckett and Hunter and leaves them to die as he backs into the computer-controlled elevator to escape.  What he does not know is that Roz and Ed have arranged for the bomb to be in that elevator with him and so, as he descends to victory he notices the bomb… too late.

Tag scene.  Beckett is physically out of shape, and Ed likes chocolate. Ha ha ha LOL. These guys are just TOO funny. 

Public service announcement:  When it comes to drugs, you shouldn’t try-mesenaroun…